It’s no secret that Muslim extremists have a binary view of the world. There are the good people and there are the bad people. Obviously, these Muslim extremists, or Islamists, would claim that they belong to the first group. That’s the staging ground for a grander agenda. Their special-ness extends to within the Muslim community itself. They are the vanguard of righteousness amidst a sea of ignorance. Since this proverbial sea is nominally Muslim, an Islamic term is applied on these ignorants; jahil, from the word jahiliya. Jahiliya is a highly emotive term describing the age of abject ignorance before the coming of Prophet Muhammad.
Muslim extremists also have a quaint habit of seeing the Quran as totally self-explanatory. “It’s not rocket science,” they would declare. However, to live up to that claim, any interpretation of the holy scriptures done by them inevitably gravitates toward literalism. What’s worse, most Muslims aren’t even familiar with the Arabic language and the particular grammar that infuses the Quranic text, so what they end up being literal about are the translations of the Quran, be they English, Malay or Mandarin. It’s a queer situation, and by queer, I don’t mean a deviated sex life, but strange, odd, peculiar. You see how easy it is to misunderstand even a single-syllabled word?
Traditional Islamic science, for example, has had to deal with the issue of “abrogation”, in which certain verses supersede other verses in the Quran. Obviously, to minimize errors, religious sciences had to contextualize the revelations, to see if a particular injunction had universal or only specific clout. Narrations called “hadiths” play an important part in this contextualization, for they consist of rigorously-attested reports of how the Prophet had acted and what he had said in certain situations. And it’s a given that all this has to be done in the original language of both the Quran and the hadiths. Enormous attention is thus given to philology and grammar.
But literalists discard this intellectual tradition with slogans like “back to Quran and Sunna”, as if the intellectual tradition has always had the shallowest grounding in both.
Like I said, it’s a queer situation, helped no less by the relative pacifism that the intellectual tradition has shown in the face of relentless attacks from modern-day literalists. The latter go by several names, “progressives”, “modernists” or the ever-useful “reformist”. All these names are meant to imply that a polar opposite exists in the Muslim community (see my previous entry, “Names do Matter” for a more complete discussion). Where there are progressives, for example, there are retrogrades. My personal favorite is “muwahidun”, which means “monotheist”. The play in semantics is hardly original. In this, Protest-ants have an enviable head-start.
There are signs, however, that the pacifism is coming to an end. Take the recent appointment of Ustaz Mohamed Asri Zainul Abidin to the Mufti’s office of the Malaysian state of Perlis, for example. In numerous statements, the Ustaz made several comments on the state of Islam that seems to be rampant around him. I don’t think he counted on the formidable Dr Gibril Haddad responding to some of his views, though:
The function of Saudi-trained clerics is to propagate Do-It-Yourself Islam. Since irony is terra incognita to them, they may even do so in the name of reclaiming Islam from the clerics. They also mention “reform,” “renewal,” “Qur’an and Sunna” in the same ironic/absurd vein since we all know that DIY Islam spells chaos, not reform, not renewal, and certainly not Qur’an and Sunna. But how appealing to TV viewers, internet surfers, and DIY Muslims everywhere!
Allah Most High said He had raised the Ulema above the non-ulema in rank; but Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, the 35-year old Mufti of the Malaysian state of Perlis, wants each Muslim to be his or her own mufti. Our Holy Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, said that Allah Most High reserves the understanding of the Religion to those for whom He desires the greatest good. But Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin says: “Religion deserves to be understood by everybody.” Evidently, he finds Allah and His Prophet conservative and in need of renewal. “Overhaul,” as he puts it.
Asri dismisses the Muslim ulema but admires Turkish picturebook author Harun Yahya. Asri mocks the traditional Malay ustaz for teaching the jurisprudence of snow in snowless Malaysia rather, he claims, than teach prayer to new Muslims. Many a professional with poor Arabic are better read in Islam and “might have memorised more hadith,” Asri suggests, than a traditional scholar of Qur’anic commentary. Asri has a doctorate, he is a mufti. It must be true. After all, he witnessed a traditional preacher confuse the aedes mosquito with AIDS once. This is what Asri, a Malaysian Salafi, would like you to believe is the state of things in Muslim Malaysia. Then there is all this talk about the need to “kill off ideas and understanding. ”
Asri thinks light of “the scholars of old” but much of “science today.” He actually says: “The Quran speaks many times of the greatness of God in the signs that we see all around us. The scholars of old could not grasp such verses thoroughly, but science can do so now.” “They” are reactionary while “Islam puts forth arguments.” The subversion of persons by abstractions is only one of the many ironies of the grammar of islamism. A much greater irony, of course, is that islamism is the greatest threat to Islam today. Machiavelli himself could not dream up worse perversion than what a mufti in the most ostensibly advanced Muslim society on earth can stand up before Muslims and teach nowadays.
A few days ago the young “leader” of a group named “Tawhid and Jihad” shot Syrian border guards as he attempted to make his way into Lebanon, then, rather than get arrested, blew himself up with an explosive belt. It does not take an Einstein to divine the slippery slope that leads from “youngest-ever” muftis preaching revisionism, to 28-year old “Tawhid and Jihad” suicides in our times. It is a fact that the Islamic podium in Southeast Asia is now dominated by the Ikhwan al-Muslimin. If so-called Progressives want you to do away with your Muslim identity, so-called Salafis teach you to do away with yourself. The suicide is spiritual and intellectual as well, since they convince their blind followers that they are “thinking for themselves” and according to “Qur’an and Sunna!”
The rule of boys and the podium of the ignorant are among the signs of the end of times predicted by our Holy Prophet, upon him blessings and peace. Islamist Islam can be compared to an adolescent Hulk alternately throwing huge, uncontrollable tantrums and sermonizing incoherently at his parents, the neighbors, their dog, and everything else in the world. How can we best treat this confusion and extract it from our midst? Two steps seem paramount for people of Islamic learning and educated lay Muslims alike, although respective emphases differ:
1. Acknowledge the odd good point each newfangled movement may forward, and expose the endless errors and incoherences that dominate their discourse. This requires greater knowledge and representation of what they themselves claim to speak for, namely, the main and ancillary (e.g. logic and language) sciences of the Qur’an and Sunna as taught by Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama’a.
2. Reconnect our professionals and graduates about their own scholarly tradition so they can tell gold from plastic and tin. This necessitates firsthand connection with a traditional, non-Wahhabi teacher as well as pursuing the reform of the soul. TV muftis, websites and picturebooks are a delusion. So is party activism.
Asri says he believes “two movements will influence the minds of Malaysians in the future: one is the Salafiyyah movement. The second…is that of liberal Muslims.” Malaysians should beg to differ one and all. Surely their heritage is richer than to blinker its sons and daughters into a bankrupt alternative. What do the accomplished elders and their graduates and communities say? Where is the voice of the Muslim majority in Malaysia? They are best qualified to silence those who think contemporary Malaysians must be (how horrible to say!) either Wahhabi-Salafis or liberal-progressives.
May we learn and re-learn, calmly and methodically, to differentiate between authentic voices of Reason and Learning on the one hand, and, on the other, immature voices promoting rebellion and self-destructive pseudo-scholarship.
Allahumma! Arina al-haqqa haqqan wa-urzuqna ittiba’ah, wa-arina al-batila batilan wa-urzuqna ijtinabah.
Was-Salam,
GF Haddad
In another scathing rebuttal, Ustaz Muhammad Azlan Abdullatif, a Malaysian scholar, said:
The purported simplified do-it-yourself approach to understanding and practicing Islam expounded by the youngest-mufti-ever Asri in itself shows his lack of grasp on the intellectual reality of Islamic scholarship. Citing a few legal opinion which he erroneously believe as being”outdated” and “time wasting” he then proceeds to generalize the whole tradition of Islamic scholarship as grossly inadequate and require “tajdid”.
This approach, as a student of history may well understand, is the clarion call of every deviated sect in Islamic history, from the Khawarij to the recently risen Islamic liberalism. What better way to further one’s agenda than raising up the spectre of a make-believe enemy to cow the uninitiated into submission. In this case branding the intellectual tradition of past scholars as “confusing”, “unsuitable with modernity” might well do the trick. If the Shi’is can do it by claiming the same (that the ummah has gone woefully misled and safety is in Shi’ism) why not the Wahhabis (Salafis in Asri’s nomenclature).
And to whom does this tajdid falls, you might head-scratchingly wonder? Why, to Asri and his ilk, of course. !! They have, suddenly, in a burst of intellectual epiphany deemed themselves as the next saviour of Islam, understanding seemingly what no other Islamic scholar in the past 1400 years has ever understood, brushing off the methodology of the past scholars as age old relic not fit to see light of day.
As delusionally exciting as his words may seem, Asri forgets that he himself is not ma’sum and to be honest his scholarly capacity can be compared to, say, Imam Al-Ghazali (whom Asri often disparages in his climb to notoriety) akin to pre-schooler to a Nobel prize winner. He unabashedly presents himself as a scholar with original ideas but all the while he himself is imitating (read : taqlid) the ideas of a fringe group of scholars. He himself has never been able to provide a clear and detailed methodology of how “true” Islam can be achieved, instead he couches his archaic ideas in various clichés all the while devoid of any substance. He then whines over the state of the ummah and places the blame squarely on our past scholars and their methodology.
Asri claims we need to go back to the Quran and Sunnah. Well, for the past 1000 years what have we been following? Have the hundreds and thousands scholars all been wrong or deliberately mislead or lack the intellectual capacity? If Asri claims that they’re not totally wrong and not totally right, then this is inconceivable as it would mean a break in the narration of the Quranic message, not only in its literal transmission but in its transmission of understanding. If there is this break then how can the truth now be in Asri’s hands now since he claim he derives his own knowledge through the same chain of transmission with the same narrators whom the majority now he claims have defects in understanding the Quran and Sunnah. It is as if the total truth has disappeared for a thousand years (barring Ibn Taymiyyah and Muhammad Abdul Wahhab, of course, whom the Salafis make taqlid of) and now, voila, the truth manifest itself in Asri’s hands.
If we look closely, the Salafis has never been honest in admitting that they actually have nothing to offer. There has been no significant intellectual contribution from them until this present day from the day of their inception. Their delusional claim to prominence is totally based on:
(1) raising khilafiyyah issues repeatedly
(2) disparaging past scholars
(3) the deceitful claim that the present practices of Muslims in general are not in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah.
What better way to the limelight than condemning established practices, disparaging distinguished scholars while claiming they hold the keys to salvation? The idea of every Muslim talking about Islam is highly dangerous, in the sense that everybody becomes an expert without the proper knowledge. A Muslim may talk about Islam in its generality but not in its specific. The Quran is specific with the warning : “Do you talk about God that which you do not understand?” and the verse “Is the knowledgable the same as those who do not know?”, “ask the scholars if you do not know” and other verses, points to the fact there is a significant difference between the scholar and the layman.
A healthy man may speak about his health and his experience in achieving and preserving his knowledge but without approximately 20 years of training he is no heart surgeon. Of course, everyone has the right to question his or her doctor but without proper medical knowledge he may not comprehend and if matters are taken into his own hands may result in an early appointment with the Angel of Death. You can even sue your doctor in court disputing his diagnosis by calling for a second opinion but that does not make youyourself a doctor. In fact you would contravene the law if you claimyourself as a doctor without the proper qualification. But in the case of Islam everyone who walks and talks can make decisions on the jurisprudence of Islam, on the doctrinal creed of Islam ?? This is of course nonsensical.
As for the fiqh of snow, yes, Malaysia sees no snow, neither did the Hijaz where our Beloved Prophet sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam lived, neither did Egypt (on a regular basis) where the great scholars of the Shafie madzhabs such as Al-Subki, Al-Ramli etc lived and produced their great works. As the Prophet mentioned it, so did our scholars who dutifully recorded it and expounded jurisprudically on it. Now who’s following the Prophet?
I can imagine a Malaysian, who has never seen snow and reared under Asri’s reformed-and-dynamic-as-opposed-to-conservative fiqh, goes on an expedition to the Arctic in the spirit of Malaysia Boleh, shoulders sagging burdened with sacks of water (oops, no leather sacks or qullah in conservative fiqh terminology, let’s use plastic tanks, its more modern) because his reformed minded teacher refused to teach the fiqh of snow as Malaysia has no snow.
As a reminder, lets ponder on the hadith of our Beloved Prophet sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam : “………..until, when no ‘Alim is left, the people will take ignorant men for teachers. These will be questioned and they will reply without knowledge. They are themselves misguided and misguide others”. (Narrated by Imam al-Bukhari) and in the words of Munir Abduh Agha :-
“It can be ascertained that the troublemakers (al-mushagibbun)in our time who claim that they belong to the school of the Salaf, outwardly making a show of such affiliation, do not in any way whatsoever belong to it: neither in knowledge nor in practice. They are propagators of falsehood, deception and misguidance devoid of all guidance.”
Wallahu a’lam.
Nonetheless, Perlis remains a tempting place for Salafists to emigrate to. As one contributor to the SalafiTalk bulletin board wistfully remarks,
…in Most Masajid in the state of Perlis, the Masajid there do not have the bid’a of making doa’ in jemaah after solat in congregation. They also teach the Kitaabs of the Two Mashaykhul-Islaam – Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab and Ibn Taimiyah.
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excellent post
A really scary and excellent post about what is happening not only in Malaysia. It is laughable, and no laughing matter at the same time. Religious adolescence is the most dangerous kind, a form of sociopathy that only values itself, and will do and say anything to attain its own agenda and power. It is the ignorance of the know-it-all and nothing can dissuade it.
Ya Haqq!